I hope you had a very happy holiday season and that 2015 will be a great year for you.
I’ve been super-busy lately, working with with my students on their lessons and on another video project in which a couple of my non camera-shy students have agreed to appear. We’re having lots of fun putting it together and it should be finished and posted here in the blog by mid spring.
Keep studying, practice well, and I’ll see you next post.
During the 14-years I spent as one of the resident pianists at the Westin Hotel, Copley Place, Boston, MA, I accumulated many experiences and stories I’ll be sharing with you from time to time about my experiences with lots of very interesting people I met at the hotel.
One such story about how I first met a very special person came back to my mind instantly while reading a post in another blog in which this person was mentioned. Let me tell you…
One night during my first set, as I was playing a few solo-piano warm-up songs before bringing out the rest of my trio, I noticed some faint flashes of light coming from the rear of the room.
Thinking it was someone with a camera taking tourist photos, I just ignored it. However, when the flashes continued with increasing frequency, I ruled out tourist picture-taking! These flashes seemed to be directed at me specifically to get my attention. Was this person sending me a message in Morse Code or playing a practical joke or some kind of prank on me? I became more and more curious as it continued!
So, near the end of the first song, I turned my head slightly toward the back of the room and I spotted the source of this mysterious happening! It was coming from a very well-dressed gentleman also in a tuxedo who was seated alone at the very last table in the back of the room and he was looking through something he was holding in his hands which was pointed directly at me. I turned my head back towards the piano and got back into the music.
The flashing continued consistently throughout my warm-up. As I signaled for the bassist and drummer to come on up, I took a short break to introduce myself to this gentleman but by the time I arrived at his table, the mysterious contraption he had in his hand was nowhere in sight.
I introduced myself to him and he said his name was Jimmy Lyon. At that time, I had no idea who he was and I asked if he had any requests. He said not right then but he’d be back in a while after he played a set or two across the street at the Copley Plaza Hotel. That told me he was a pianist so I knew I’d go visit him on my first break but before he departed, I asked him about the object which had been reflecting the spotlights back into the corner of my eye!
He apologized for the distraction because he didn’t realize a reflection was occurring! I assured him it was very faint and that I was fine with it and not offended in any way whatsoever… I was just curious as to what it was. So he took the object out of his pocket and handed it to me.
It was a very classy looking flat rectangular box that looked much like a personal cigarette case but when a special button was pressed, it turned into a set of pop-up adjustable-focus-telescopic binoculars!
He said he liked my playing and he wanted to see how I was voicing chords and making runs. Rather than stand right behind me to look over my shoulder, he said he preferred to sit in the back and watch with his pop-up specs. Both of us started laughing so hard!!! Right away I knew he was a wonderful guy with a great sense of humor!
I took a look through those binoculars and though they were small, their telescopic ratio was very good with great clarity! As I recall the account now in 2014, I still laugh about it!
Shortly after introducing ourselves, both of us went back to work but as I got back to my bandstand, I asked my bass player, who was either Teddy Kotic or Rodney Richardson at that time, if he’d heard of a pianist named Jimmy Lyon. He said he certainly had heard of him and he gave me the “411”! That’s how I first met and learned about Jimmy Lyon!
Eventually Jimmy returned that night with his “pop-up spy specs” 
to check us out again and with every opportunity I’d get, I’d go across the street and listen to him for what turned out to be MY “nightly piano lesson”! From my point of view, I believe I learned more about voicings from him than he learned from me but we continued our frequent visits with each other during the rest of his tenure at the Copley Plaza.
I was working 7-nights a week at the Westin and he was working 6-nights a week. I learned a lot from Jimmy in the short time I knew him and when the time eventually came for him to return to his home in Paramus, NJ and his gigs in NY, I thanked him for his kindness and let him know that I was very much looking forward to his next return to Boston, but it wasn’t meant to be. He passed away all too soon! What a song specialist! A true gentleman through and through! I was very privileged to have been able to count him as my friend for the short time I knew him!
Here are five audio clips I recorded of him (with his permission) that you’ve never heard, unless you were there the nights I recorded him. The audio quality is not the best you’ve ever heard and you’ll hear people talking throughout each song. if you can ignore the distractions and you want to hear Jimmy playing solo-piano in a very relaxed mood, then here you go! Ear training students, beginners, intermediates and advanced, might use these files as source material too! Pick out some melodies, or chord progressions or voicings that interest you. In any case, enjoy!
Looking At You (Click the encircled down-arrow to download.)
Begin The Beguine (Click the encircled down-arrow to download.)
I Concentrate On You (Click the encircled down-arrow to download.)
You Turned The Tables On Me (Click the encircled down-arrow to download.)
Memories Of You (Click the encircled down-arrow to download.)
Jimmy Lyon (R.I.P)
Full Name : James Frederick Lyon.
Profile : American jazz pianist.
Jimmy worked, among others with Mabel Mercer (singer), June
Christy, Polly Bergen.
Born : November 06, 1921 in Morgan Village, Camden, New Jersey.
Died : November 28, 1984 in New York City, New York. (Cancer)
See you next post.
I hope that you and everyone on earth have a very happy new year in 2014!
Keep studying, practicing, and making music, and I’ll see you next post!
ATTN: All Instrumentalists and Vocalists! This post applies to you!
As you’re listening to some music and you hear a melody, a phrase, a motif, or an arrangement that draws your attention because it “speaks” to you and you really like it, you should “T-it-up”! What do I mean by that? You should transcribe it! You’ll benefit whether you “T” all of it, or only a fractional part of it! Just get in there and “T” something up!
I borrowed the title phrase for this post from the world of golf. I’ve been a fan of Tiger Woods for a long time. Through his actions on the golf course and his interviews, Tiger has always demonstrated that he possess a deep knowledge of golf on many levels. He has frequently spoken about the high regard and respect he has for golf’s “elder statesmen” like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicholas. He’s spoken specifically about the fact that he’s watched many videos of them and studied them.
In the world of music, you’ll find many musicians, including myself, who have the same kind of high-regard and respect for music’s “elder statesmen”. For instance, whenever someone asked The Beatles and Eric Clapton questions like “who most influenced you?”, they’d always name Chuck Berry first as they spoke about their high regard and respect they had for him. Whenever Chuck Berry was asked that same question, as he addressed it in his autobiography, he’d immediately credit his local peers, the great boogie-woogie pianists and the great Nat “King” Cole as he spoke about the high regard and respect he has for them all!
So, I was particularly delighted when one of my students, bass player Nicholas Gendron, originally an ear training student who by the time he signed on with me had already done complete James Jamerson transcriptions on his own by ear, spoke to me about the high regard and respect he has for many of the same great jazz bassists for whom I share the same feelings. When Nick expressed his interest in expanding his ear training studies to include having me work with him on “strengthening-up” his walking bass lines, I immediately suggested that he start right away on transcribing some of the great jazz bassists. I agreed to get right in there with him and do some of my own transcriptions of some of the bass veterans also to share with him in his lessons. So for this post, I decided to give you the complete transcription I did for Nick of what the great Israel Crosby played on “But Not For Me” from one of Ahmad Jamal’s classic albums. You can view the video and download this PDF too!
[gview file=”http://www.artmatthewsonlinepianolessons.com/wp-content/uploads/But-Not-For-Me-Ahmad-Jamal-AM.pdf”]
The information you can get from studying transcriptions is invaluable, and by all means, I strongly suggest that you, and all serious students of improvised music, should do a lot of your own transcription work! Don’t get me wrong. It’s definitely ok to draw information from the transcriptions of other people, however, the benefits of doing your own transcription work will pay bigger dividends because, in doing so, the information you derive gets planted deeper into your musical soul by the nature of the do-it-yourself process.
Whether you do one-chorus, multiple choruses, single phrase, multiple phrases, right-hand only, left-hand only, both hands, partial heads, full heads, partial arrangements, or full arrangements… you’ll be doing something that’s good for your musicianship!
The focus of your transcriptions are determined, of course, by whatever your objective may be at any given time. For instance, you might limit the focus of your transcription to getting the actual musical notes only! Or, you may want to exclude the actual notes and focus on obtaining chord progressions only, as in getting the chord changes of some particular song or tune. Perhaps you want everything… actual notes, chord changes, articulations, and dynamics too! Ear training makes it all available to you.
You can write your transcription work down on manuscript paper using standard music notation, or you might write it down in some other form on unlined or lined notebook paper for that matter! If you have a good memory, you can even skip the writing-it-down process altogether and simply keep it all in your head, as Nick did with his James Jamerson transcriptions. If you can do it, I recommend you do some of both because it’s all good!
At the time of this post, Nick is in Aruba! He’ll be starting his own page within my site soon after he returns so if you’d like to follow Nick on his page, check back in a few weeks and just type or paste his name into any search box on my site.
Remember that although your teacher or coach can point you in the direction of what work you need to do, it is YOU that has to DO the work by practicing!
Do some listening and “T” something up!
Practice well!
I don’t know about you but the first word I heard as a newborn baby was probably the word “NO!” Well, maybe it was “mom” or “dad”, but “NO!” was probably very high on the list of first-heard words.
My first physical experience was probably the doctor-administered “rear-end spank” that was customarily given to newborns. Do they still do that today? That spank hurt and it made me cry, and henceforth, my connection to “blues” music was immediately solidified! (Just kidding!)
Seriously though, I chose “Speak Like a Child” to be a part this post’s title because, for me, the phrase has a special figurative significance.
When a child learns to speak English or any other spoken language, a big part of the process is spending lots of time listening to and imitating the words, phrases, and sentences being spoken by the people around them–family members in most instances. The key words here are listening and imitating.
Likewise, one of the best ways for people to learn the language of jazz is to spend lots of time listening to and imitating and even transcribing the sounds of musical ideas and phrases being played in the music you hear or by the musicians around you. The key words here are also listening and imitating.
All of the world’s best orators started off as kids learning the intricacies of speech by listening and echoing single words, short phrases, longer phrases, and sentences, etc. until eventually, the ability to compose and express their own thoughts finally took hold. The language of jazz has the same dynamic! That is to say, all of the world’s best instrumentalists and improvisers started off as beginners who could barely make a sound on their respective instrument(s). But through the long process of listening, imitating, and learning to read in many cases, the art of self-expression finally developed and they became great players.
So if you’re not already doing it, I want to encourage you to “Speak Like a Child” and add this type of listen-and-imitate approach to your practice routine. Get in there and get started by learning to imitate some short phrases first before moving on to medium length and longer phrases. Melodies and fragments of melodies are good too! I’m going to ask a couple of my students to let me post some of their work along these lines on their student page in the near future. It really is a very effective way to learn the syntax of jazz language and to build a lexicon of phrases and vocabulary. Stay tuned.
I wish America and all of her citizens a very happy July 4th and holiday week!
Keep studying, practicing, and making music, and I’ll see you next post!
Sleepyhead, pictured on the left, has discovered that she loves the sounds a piano makes, but at her age, she hasn’t had the benefit of having piano lessons. So as she waits for a traditional music teacher or someone like me to come into her life to show her the way, what does she do with her curiosity? She continues to explore, experiment, and attempt to play the things she hears by ear. This can be frustrating.
I guess that Sleepyhead, like you, me, and most people, started learning spoken language by first listening to its words and phrases, then imitating and reproducing what she’d heard until she got it right. That is “ear training” as it is applied to spoken language. It is a crucially important stage through which everyone needs to successfully pass in order to have their speaking skills and spoken language abilities successfully developed. Phonetics are learned by ear.
This same type of ear training technique, as it is applied to the language of music, with respect to playing by ear, is just as important because it provides the required theoretical framework and infrastructures upon which your “ear playing” abilities are based. Without having such infrastructures, the most sophisticated and experienced music readers may be able to play from memory but playing by ear will present them with very significant challenges.
Being able to hear, being able to understand what you’re hearing, and being able to assemble then transduce those data into instrumental sounds that capture and express what you’re hearing is what ear training is all about. Ear training gives you the ability to identify and realize the musical sounds that you hear externally or in your head and then communicate or bring that sound into the physical world so that someone else can understand and appreciate what it is you’re saying– in this case what it is you’re playing. This is why ear training is important to kids, and to you.